Sunday's Snapshots

The woman everyone called Nana was my stepdad’s mom, with white perfectly coiffed hair, makeup always in place, and ironed slacks with blouse and cardigan ensemble. She was hardly the sort of woman you’d think would inspire anything beyond a fleeting feeling that fun needs to be left outside. But her formal Catholic looks were at odds with her quiet sense of adventure, her ready smile and laugh, and her deep and far-reaching kindness.

Nana was always up for a good time, whether a play, travel, or a beer tasting. We’d all become so sick of hearing about craft beer’s superiority that we bought ten different kinds of beer, from Budweiser to Moose Drool, and set about a blind test. Tasters were encouraged to describe flavor, texture and aftertaste, color and smell. Beers were brought out randomly to ensure complete anonymity. Still, everyone claimed the third one had to be Pabst, and the fifth one Sierra Nevada. Sometimes the declarations were correct, but not always. Everyone was laughing and having a great time, even the kiddos too young to participate in the event itself but intrigued by the taste-testers as young as twenty-one and as ancient as our matriarch, Nana.

At one point, a beer was brought out, given sips all around and much ado was made over the terrible smell, taste, and aftertaste, calls of “bring the next one, hurry!” and “what was that?” punctuated the air followed by a quiet hush as Nana took a sip and declared, “well, that tastes like horse piss.”

There was a moment of stunned silence while the words and their source fought with our collective understanding of reality, and then guffaws of laughter, tears of hilarity, and incredulous declarations of “Nana!” resounded through the air, while Nana sat with a prim smile on her face, an “It’s true,” her final declaration on the matter.

Nana was the kind of woman who believed the best about everybody and when the scandal around Kathie Lee Gifford’s sweatshops exploded, Nana could be heard to say, “Oh, I just don’t believe she could have known.” Her naivete was based not in a lack of intelligence, but in an overabundant belief in people’s inherent goodness.

Nana was raised on a farm, one of thirteen children, and had been whisked away to a new life in the city by her husband, a man who rode the rails to seek his fortune, a fortune that started with bookmaking for the powerful and elite in the city: judges, doctors, and politicos. Together they raised two children in a modest home, in a quiet neighborhood, with a Catholic bent.

Nana’s house had blue carpet and Lladró statues. There was no television in the living room, but a stereo and speakers that were wired throughout the house, often playing Sinatra. To watch television, you had to go through the living room, down the hallway to the back where a couch and recliner sat in dark wood-paneled repose, a tiny but heavy and convex-screened box complete with VCR and remote.

I counted myself lucky to live with Nana for a time when she needed a bit of help but wasn’t quite ready to leave her home. We’d make dinners together and I’d do the dishes, then we’d retire to the backroom where she’d watch the news and I’d read. We watched the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burn, sitting in stunned and disbelieving silence together. We watched Jeopardy every week, and Wheel of Fortune if we turned the television on too soon. We’d surprise one another with the questions we knew.

Nana has been gone for years, her possessions picked apart by family for keepsakes and given away, her home sold. At one point shortly after she died, I was woken from a deep sleep by her calling my name. I sat up, instantly awake asking, “Yes, Nana?” But there was only silence and my arm hair standing up, my ears ringing with the effort to hear her voice again.

I miss her goodness, her kindness, the way she had of bringing out the best in those around her simply by expecting nothing less. I sometimes struggle to remember this lesson, find myself thinking the worst of people, forgetting everyone’s coming from a place informed by their experience, one that may be very different from my own. As people speak to one another less, as we’re all launched into categories and boxes based on the way we drive in winter, dress in summer, and vote throughout the year, it can be hard to remember that in the end, we’re all inherently the same. It’s easy to dismiss someone because they drink the beer that tastes like “horse piss,” forgetting they may very well think the same about what’s in my cup.

Sunday Dutro is an internationally published writer living in Thompson Falls with her beautiful family. Reach her at [email protected] or sundaydutro.com.